Thumbs up for Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Fantasy.
This is one of those weird books that’s better than it is. My editor-brain—even as I was reading it—kept saying: no, tighten that up, this part drags, I’m pretty sure I’ve read this story a dozen times already, expand that part a lot please—but nevertheless I kept turning pages, and turning, and turning, and when I was done after a marathon reading session I gave it to my roommate and she stayed in bed literally all. day. until she’d finished it too. And yet, my (young, male) coworker got fatally bogged down in the slow bits and couldn’t comprehend why we and another friend found it so addictive. I can tell you why: it’s because structurally, it’s a romance, rather than the saving-the-world story it’s masquerading as, and if you’re not emotionally involved in knowing when and how the characters are ever going to get together, the sometimes-slow pace might well kill it for you. (I know at least one person who would argue with this characterization, but I’ve thought about it and I’m sticking to it. Unless for some reason you find the heroine exceptionally fascinating as a person—I didn’t—it’s a leisurely romance.) Personally, I think that subtle romances are underdone in modern fiction, so I’m pleased that this book has been such a success. Yet at the same time, I’m sufficiently aware of its flaws that I can’t recommend it without a “but…” attached. Why couldn’t the pacing have been just a little bit better…?
That was when I realized that I already knew the story. I had heard it sung. Ludmila and the Enchanter, only in the song, the brave countess disguised herself as an old peasant woman and cooked and cleaned for the wizard who had stolen her husband’s heart, until she found it in his house locked inside a box, and she stole it back and saved him. My eyes prickled with hot tears. No one was enchanted beyond saving in the songs. The hero always saved them. There was no ugly moment in a dark cellar where the countess wept and cried out protest while three wizards put the count to death, and then made court politics out of it.
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